


Further Divided

by Potboy



Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-08
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-03-29 14:20:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3899497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Potboy/pseuds/Potboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 'Divided', Rush hesitated over allowing the shuttle to lock down. What if he had hesitated too long?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"I bet you a buck." Young rested a hand against the overhead support like he was casual about this, despite Eli panicking in the background. Six months ago Scott would have believed the colonel's face showed no kind of emotion greater than a touch of disgusted annoyance, but he had learned since that in order to figure out what Young was really feeling you took what he showed and you multiplied it a couple of million times. 

He was still kind of impressed that the colonel's reaction to being trapped in an undocked shuttle with the ship about to go into FTL without them, potentially - oh shit - potentially vaporizing them in the process, was to be quietly, deeply pissed off. 

A little part of Scott even now was geeking out about that, a little part of him that was being drowned out by the shriller voice insisting "Sir! Five minutes." 

"Plenty of time. Let's... uh. Let's think about this." 

Plenty of time, right. Plenty of time with Rush fighting Eli for control. Plenty of time to appreciate that Young was forcing a move in a game Scott didn't entirely understand yet. Holding himself and Scott hostage in the hopes that someone would have the decency to give in before they were both fried. 

Scott could hear the frantic helplessness in Eli's voice, and the certainty in Rush's. Rush - Doctor Rush - well, he knew the colonel believed the worst of the man, but Rush wouldn't. _I mean, bring it down to the wire, and he wouldn't go through with it, would he?_ He'd have to know that Greer would hunt him down, that James would hunt him down. TJ - what the hell would she do? And Chloe? 

It felt like the shuttle had already been peeled away from around him, thinking about what Chloe would feel. She would care, right? He knew she was pretty tight with Rush these days, but she wouldn't watch Scott die and not care at all, would she? 

Young would give in, he thought, briefly, dismissed the thought with one glance at Young's stony expression. No he wouldn't. The colonel had lines and they were set pretty far back from where any sane person would push him, but well, Rush was not any sane person and he didn't know when to quit.

 "Eli do not let that man take over a single system." 

"He's doing it anyway!" 

So this was not quite the way Scott had pictured himself going out. "Thirty seconds." He closed his eyes for a moment of wordless prayer. Rush would give in. He'd have to. Someone would make him. Wouldn't they? 

Shivering under every inch of his skin slid a vivid premonition of being demolecularized, stripped atom from atom. "Twenty seconds," and he knew no one was yielding, no one was backing down. A piercing moment of regret and yet satisfaction, because yeah, he had at least imagined that this was the man he'd be going out with. That part of it he was pretty okay about. The rest - he swallowed - he hoped he didn't fuck up, like he had fucked up everything else in his life. 

"Ten seconds." Scott felt time crystallize around him, slowing as his mind tried to make it stop. 

A rush of movement startled him, as Young threw himself back into the pilot's seat. Scott fought disorientation - what? Young threw the shuttle's engines and manoeuvring jets into maximum, and realization hit Scott like a rebuke. Shit! Why hadn't he thought of that? They were pulling away. 

"Five seconds," Scott's hands flushed and slipped on the back of his chair. To his shame he was shaking, trembling, as he had trembled after the night of weeping when he had faced his part in the sin of abortion and known there was no place for him in God's priesthood. If it was to end now, this career at least wouldn't end in shame. 

The engines thrummed and roared. Temperature warning indicators came on across the board. "Three. Two...." 

Thin smoke beneath his feet. The shuttle was accelerating away from its dock like a shot from the main weapon, but was it going to be enough? "One." 

Shields sprang to life all over Destiny, golden, beautiful, and they were _outside_ them, looking in. A heartbeat while Scott processed that they had outdistanced vaporization, that they were not going to die today, and then ghost green and purple lights curled around Destiny's axe-head shape and she was gone. 

She was gone, and they were left behind. Alone in the middle of interstellar space, with no FTL drive, no way to catch her, nothing to do but to starve. "She's gone," Scott repeated out loud, because he didn't believe it. He didn't believe it at all. "She's gone. We're stranded out here."

 Young's locked and poisonous expression eased, and he gave Scott a smile that was obviously meant to be reassuring. "But we're not dead." 

"Not yet," Scott still thought he should be freaking out, but he found himself syncing up with Young's calm like he couldn't quite help himself. He didn't know how he felt about that in general, if he hated or loved the fact that he responded to Young like filings to a magnet, but right this moment he was grateful. "Probably just a matter of time, sir." 

Young gave a soft huff of laughter and cut the engines. "One way or another, it always is." 

~ 

There was a shifting, rattling groan and the ship lurched into FTL. Rush had done nothing. Camile looked at Chloe, to check she wasn’t imagining this. 

“We're in FTL,” whispered Chloe, her face very white and her eyes brilliant with disbelief. “Is the shuttle safe?” 

Rush seemed flustered, shaken. He was slow to answer her, and she couldn’t tell if the pause was shock or calculation. “The transfer should have finished two seconds before we jumped. There should have been time to lock down then. I don’t know what— But the dock is empty. The shuttle is gone.” 

“Gone?” Chloe took a step back, pale and burning and livid as she had been when her father died. “They're dead? Scott's dead? You said no one would get hurt. You said! God, I can't believe--” 

Camile stepped between the two of them, protecting Rush from the kicking she was almost sure he deserved. She was trying to believe him when he said it was a simple misfortune, but she couldn’t help but wonder. He had good cause to hate and fear Young, good cause to want the man never to return, never to threaten him again. 

Damn it. She half expected this kind of thing from Young, who was after all a trained killer accustomed to forcing his own way through at gunpoint, but Nicholas? She'd thought he was a man of science, a reasonable human being. Could he have done this deliberately, out of revenge? Or fear? If so, was it her fault for not making it clearer she would have protected him? That she was trying to nullify the threat without the need for this. 

“Congratulations,” she said bitterly, “you have just cost us our moral highground and any chance of peaceful negotiations. I hope it was worth it.” 

“Worth it?” Chloe smacked the console a powerful open handed blow, making Rush startle back and pull his hands out of reach. Camile made a patting down gesture calling for calm. She needed it herself. This was a disaster to be contained. She needed to think. She did not need their little civilian alliance to fall apart at the first reversal of fortune. 

“How could it be worth it? Scott's dead!” 

“Chloe,” Rush said, in the same gentle tone he had used when her father died, “This wasn't my intention. It was simply... an accident of timing. I didn’t know it was going to happen, but having said that, we have successfully taken over all the ship's systems, and I think it's safe to say that without the colonel the military will be disheartened and leaderless, and far more likely to come to terms quickly.” 

Camile was horrified to find herself being reassured. If that was true, it would be good. It wouldn’t excuse… but… 

“Which makes armed retaliation far less likely,” Rush was still talking, gently, winningly, with a faintly haunted look as though he would like to believe this himself. “And that may very well save lives in the longer term.” 

It had all seemed equally plausible to Camile when they had been planning it. Distract them, lock them down, and then talk. She was good at talking. They had agreed this was to be a peaceful takeover. They had agreed that none of them would take unilateral action, that all the decisions would pass through her. Had Rush ever meant to stick to that? She had thought she was his colleague and yes, even his protector, but now she wasn't sure if she had ever been more than his pawn. 

She should think more carefully about that when the situation was resolved. 

“Well, there's nothing we can do about it now,” she said, and tried to move on. “Chloe, you're upset, I know. I am too, but now we need to get this done. Rush, make sure the military stay where they're put. Try not to kill anyone else. Chloe and I will ensure any soldiers are secured in lock down on this side. Do not speak to whoever is in charge over there without me present.”

She was starting to sound like Young – suspicious, controlling. But, she halted that train of thought because she could not afford to think of Young in the past tense. If she thought about that for even a moment – if she had to face that her rebellion had cost two lives – she would not…

It was in all the hollows of her already, like a vibration, like her very particles were screaming and shaking the walls. Her hands fluttered involuntarily under her elbows where she had crossed her arms around herself, trying to squeeze it all back together. 

This could not be happening. But it was happening. She couldn’t mend this but she could somehow minimize the damage. She could control it if she could only control herself. 

She dashed the tears from her eyes and punched the guilt out of her on a breath. It would return, but later, when the ship at least was safely secured. She was committed to this now. She had better do it. 

If Rush was a murderer, should she punish him, throw him in a cell? No. There were legitimate doubts in her mind. Besides, with Eli in the military's camp she needed Rush right now. 

From the challenging, unconcerned look on Rush's face, he was well aware of that. “I wouldn't dream of it, Camile.” 

“But don’t think there isn’t going to be a reckoning.” 

Rush’s superior calm flicked into anger with a speed that told her he had been feeling something underneath it all along. It was oddly reassuring. “It was _a mistake_. But don’t try and tell me that Young didn’t deserve it after what he did to me.” 

Chloe's rage-exalted look was wavering towards tears, but it flared back up at the words. “And what was Scott? Collateral damage? I don’t understand you. Why would you save me and let him burn? You _promised_!” 

Rush’s face did that thing again, where a reaction passed across it too fast for Camile to grasp. Hurt? Guilt? Who could guess? And then it settled into a sneer. “We are fighting for our lives here, and they are the enemy. What did you think this was? Some kind of _game_?” 

In the hot silence that followed, Rush’s radio coughed and crackled, startling all three of them out of their paralysis. They looked at one another warily and then, in a token of some kind, Rush passed the handset to Camile. 

“Yes,” she said, her voice detached from herself, level and cordial and unshaken. “This is Camile.” 

“It’s James. Is Rush there? The doors have all shut on us. Eli says someone is doing it deliberately. He doesn’t know if the shuttle locked down, and I can’t get a response from the colonel. What’s happening?” 

Camile put a hand on Chloe’s elbow, not sure if she was trying to support the girl or if she was asking for comfort herself. Hearing James’s voice – puzzled, still working on the assumption that they were all friends together – brought home the enormity of what they’d done. She didn’t answer for a moment, turning to Chloe instead, making sure the three of them were still in alliance at least. 

“I'm sorry,” she said to the girl. “About Lieutenant Scott. But if we stop now it won’t bring anyone back. It won’t change anything. It’ll just mean that he died for nothing.” 

Chloe's face was eerily, almost inhumanly blank. “He was the kindest to me out of everyone on this ship, and I _killed him_. I don't know what I believe any more. I don't know what I'm doing, but—” 

“It's natural for you to--”

“But those aliens are coming and we have to be ready. That part's true, even if nothing else is. We have to be ready. That's all.” 

Trauma after trauma. There was no wonder the poor girl was cracking up now. Camile sighed as she accepted a burden of responsibility like a haversack full of rocks on her back. Rush was not to be trusted, Chloe was emotionally impaired. It was all up to Camile now. Maybe it always had been. 

She toggled the radio. “Lieutenant James? Please stand down. This ship is now under civilian control. You will be given further instructions in due course.” 

“What?!” James’s voice took on the brassy, parade-ground ring that Camile despised in these people. “I don’t do anything until I hear that from Colonel Young. _Where is he_? What the hell is going on?” 

It was already falling apart around her and she hadn’t even cleared up the stragglers yet. If James was talking for the military, then TJ must still be at large. That was a loose end that needed tying up. 

Camile wanted to cry at her own thoughts. It was a protest she’d been trying to manage here, not a war. How had she let it come to this? 

But it had, and now she had to contain it. “I’ll explain everything later. Just… stand down.” 

“Like hell I will! Eli’s going to open those doors, and there had better be an explanation when I get to you because—“ 

Rush huffed in amusement through his nose. “Military bluster. They’re locked down securely in there. We can stop their air any time we choose.” 

God, what had she done? She had always thought the widespread mistrust of Rush had been mere narrow-mindedness, the unfair ostracism of a man whom grief had turned bitter. Now, she wondered if she had dismissed their fears too quickly after all. “Nobody else dies, Nicholas.” 

“What the fuck?” James exclaimed from the radio that Camile was still holding. “What do you mean ‘nobody else dies’? Who’s dead? The colonel? Scott? _Both of them_? Camile, tell me!” 

Camile’s voice froze in her lungs. The moment passed during which she could have said something and have it sound natural. And there were no words for this anyway. She switched the radio off.


	2. Chapter 2

It was nice to have plants, TJ mused, trying to avoid any thoughts of new life, of burgeoning, of fecundity. Just because seeds were sprouting it didn’t mean that… Anyway, she’d never appreciated before the sheer generosity of medicine that grew itself. She'd started to be able to spot a medicinal from the smell. Whether they stank like garlic or were fragrant as rosemary, there was a specific not-quite-pleasant-bound-to-do-you-good smell that she thought of as diagnostic.

She finished drenching her seedlings with their daily allotted ration of water and wondered why Brody was being so shifty about Volker's bridge club. Was that code for something? With a pang of self-pity and yearning, she thought about how the pair of them were so inseparable. Always at one another’s sides. She certainly wouldn’t blame them if they were sleeping together too. In fact, it would be kind of cute.

Speak of the devil, here came Volker looking self-important and worried and more harried than normal. “Brody, why's your radio turned off?”

Brody glanced at her, and something sank and settled in her stomach. That wasn't a bashful 'I don't want our private business shared around the ship' look. That was fear and guilt. They were looking at her like she was a rabid dog, like they were scared to make a move in case she'd bite.

“ Guys?” she said, concerned and even a little offended, because what the hell had she done to deserve that? “Is there a problem?”

“ Sorry,” Volker said, “You weren't meant to be down here, and well,” he laughed. She'd never seen Volker laugh before – it was a stress reaction, obviously, because there was nothing of amusement about it. His eyes were white rimmed, and a stink of fear came off him as he moved. “Nothing about this is happening the way it was supposed to.”

TJ forgot about seeds and onboard romance, her military and medical instincts waking up. Nobody smelled like that unless they were genuinely terrified, and he was half cowering away from her. He knew something – something he believed was going to make her very angry.

She slipped a hand into her pocket, where she had fallen into the habit of carrying an emergency scalpel in its plastic case.

Outside the greenhouse, someone was shouting. Dunning, she thought, and was that Lisa Park? She could not conceive of a reason why the bubbly young woman should be shouting at Dunning, unless she too was involved in whatever this was. She thumbed the cover off her blade and went to find out.

Dunning had pulled a gun on Park. Her hands were up but her face was resolute. “Put the gun down.”

“ Airman, what's happening?” TJ asked, though he looked as confused as she felt. Dunning was not the brightest bulb at the best of times, but a good man, reliable, solid, not inclined to panic over nothing.

“ Something's going on, Lieutenant. We're cut off from the rest of the ship. I'm trying to report to the Colonel, but these people won't let me through.”

A crumpled look from Volker, and TJ's stomach lurched again. The guy was acting like someone had died. He was the softest of marshmallows, and he was going to tell her, right now, what--

Camile turned the corner, her own face expressionless. A faint gloss of sweat broke out along her hairline as she looked at TJ with that pitying expression that TJ had always tried to tell herself meant well, however infuriating it was. “I'm sorry. It was inevitable that a few people would be stuck on the wrong side of the line.”

Now TJ wasn't so sure. “What line?”

“ We've sealed off James, Greer and most of the military personnel. To put it bluntly, we've taken the ship.”

TJ swallowed. It was an audacious claim enough without the fucking huge hole she could hear behind the words. “Where's the colonel?”

Maybe they'd sealed the shuttle doors somehow, leaving Young and Scott stuck out there, twiddling their thumbs, unable to get back in while James and Greer found themselves cornered by an unforeseen mutiny. TJ could work with that, minimize losses, keep things in hand here until Young found a way to reverse it. She'd read his record, she'd heard the stories, she knew these idiots had no chance. It was only a matter of time, so it was up to her to keep things peaceful until...

But Camile was shaking. She looked away, biting her lips, apparently trying to force herself to stay calm. Dunning took a firmer grip on his gun and aimed between Camile's perfect brows. “What the fuck's going on?” he yelled, making all the civilians wince back. The corner of Camile's mouth trembled.

“ There was an accident,” she said, very clearly and with great dignity, “with the shuttle. Colonel Young and Lieutenant Scott...”

No.

“ Couldn't dock with the ship, and...”

NO.

“ Were vaporized by the shields.”

Once or twice in combat training, TJ had felt something move through her like a dragon. Chi, the instructor had called it, but she had preferred to think of it as pure unfiltered rage. People were always surprised to find out she had any, but what could she say, she normally kept it buried pretty deep.

It rose up now from the pit of her belly like smooth lava. From that place in her belly where perhaps something was stirring. It gathered up her misery and her broken heart and turned them too into fire, because yes, there had been times lately when she had fucking hated the man, but _nobody touched him_. Nobody hurt him without answering to her.

She was moving before she had time to complete the thought. Camile was standing between Dunning's gun and Park, watching the obvious weapon. It was easy to slam into her, get her by the hair and tug her head to one side, exposing the length of her neck to the pressure of TJ's scalpel.

Park gave a cry of alarm and started forward as Camile clamped both hands around TJ's wrist. She had sworn an oath to do no harm but right now she didn't see what harm it would do to give them all a warning. She let the sharp blade move gently in until it nudged Camile's clavicle. 

Cries of alarm and horror as blood began to well from the cut. “This is just superficial,” TJ pointed out, so high with anger she barely recognised herself. “But the interior jugular vein is close to the surface here. You might not want to jostle me. Dunning?”

“ Ma'am?” Unlike the civilians, he had calmed down at her action, reassured that she had a plan, that he was not going to have to make his own decisions.

“ Camile is going to come with us and open the doors for James and Greer. I'm going to give a ten count. Anyone else who isn't out of here by then, you shoot them.”

“ Yes ma'am.”

“ Tamara,” Camile began, and yeah, TJ had to give it to her that she had guts. She'd almost believe the woman was calm if she hadn't been able to feel her shaking, trembling in the circle of her arm.

“ Ten.”

“ Tamara, we need to talk about this.”

“ No.” She felt like she'd been saying no now with every particle of her being forever. How had they done it? An 'accident' at the very time they were staging some half assed rebellion? Yes, very likely. “No. The time to talk would have been before you killed my commander and my best friend. Nine.”

She tugged Camile into a stumbling walk, pushing her ahead of her while Dunning followed after, walking backwards, his gun still trained on Park. To be honest, Park was the one she least wanted to shoot, but the thought that even Park had been in on it, Park with her determined optimism and her friendly smile, well, the sheer level of that betrayal hurt almost as much as thinking that--

“ Eight.”

Wray's companion – a man whose name slipped TJ's mind right now – took two steps back and then turned and disappeared into the greenhouse door. Park, Volker and Brody stood firm but they were at least no longer following her.

“ Tamara,” Wray tried again, one hand now clasped over the cut to her collarbone, applying pressure as her breathing flickered with pain. “Don't. Don't open the door for more violence. What happened to Young, well, he brought it on himself. He abandoned Rush, he took advantage of you, he's not worth--”

Took advantage, right. Because TJ was so obviously a poor little girl who needed Camile's condescending patronage and protection. “Seven.”

Volker took a step back and then looked very ashamed of himself. TJ pushed Camile around the intersection of the main corridor. A couple more civilians, Morrison and Caine – Caine, the fucking traitor, whom James had liked – gasped at the sight of the blade at Camile's throat, but moved away as Dunning rounded the intersection on TJ's six. Nobody followed him.

The main door at last. She released the pressure of the scalpel and kicked out the back of Camile's legs. “On your knees. Hands on your head. Dunning.”

A nod and he had Camile covered at gunpoint, freeing TJ to hit the door release.

James was on the other side, with a full detail behind her, tooled up in tac vest and rifle. She had a look in her eyes that said 'home' to TJ, that said 'someone here understands exactly how I feel.' And fuck this 'we're all humans together' business, right now the Air Force was her family and her people and she had absolutely no doubt where she belonged.

“ Ma'am.” James saluted, white faced, crackling with the same energy that was lashing its tail in TJ's veins. “Orders?”

No.

She closed her eyes and swallowed again, because no, she'd almost forgotten that with... their losses... she was in charge now. No one to hand the decisions back to, no wealth of long experience to draw on, no relentless force or warm heart but her own.

“ Round up the civilians and secure them in the mess. Try not to make work for me, but if they shoot first, all bets are off.”

She might regret that order later. Or she might not. The civilians wanted war, they could have it. “Barnes?”

Someone had radioed the news that the doors were open, more troops were assembling every second.

“ Ma'am?” said Barnes at the back.

“ Organize details to secure the armoury and the gate room.”

“ Yes ma'am.”

“ Greer?”

He had already muscled his way to the front of the throng, rifle canted in the crook of his elbow, with a look of burning fury like a glory around him and the expression in his eyes as lost as TJ felt.

Reason was beginning to reassert itself. She wanted to make them understand the magnitude of their mistake, but on the other hand she could see she needed to keep a strict rein on Greer. He might do something now which he would regret later. Or which at least _she_ would.

“ Greer, you and Eli are with me. We’re going to get control of the ship’s systems back from Rush.”

Eli looked slumped and shrunken under his hoodie, his eyes pink and puffy. He gaped at her like he didn’t quite know what he was seeing, and it eased something screaming tight across her chest. Her fellow airmen and soldiers had seen her like this before on rare but memorable occasions, but she’d heard it could be a shock the first time.

The colonel had taken Eli under his wing at once, and Scott had been Eli’s best friend after Chloe. Out of all the civilians, he had chosen to be here, now, on their side. In this raw emotional world she was currently working with, despite not being air force, Eli was one of them. She reached out and touched his shoulder reassuringly. “Eli, I’m sure it wasn’t your fault. I’m sure you tried your best.”

“ It wasn’t good enough though, was it?”

Everett had told her this one night, before it all started, when they were still only talking. They’d sometimes watch the sun go down from the gun platform on the cliffs and he’d say things. He’d open up to her like he did with no one else on that world.

_ Sometimes you think you can save them all. You think all you have to do is your best and everyone will live. They don’t tell you that often your best doesn’t even come close. You got to find a way to live with that, somehow – the blood on your hands that you can’t wash off. _

She smiled at Eli now, sadly. “I hear a lot of the time it never is.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Anything?” Young turned his head to watch Scott pore over the shuttle's guidance screens. Scott had reached the end of his knowledge and wits and the click of the scroll wheel had fallen silent. That must have been what prompted the question. 

He was conscious of the silence as never before. You didn't think, in Destiny, that you were isolated, abandoned, in the middle of deep and empty space. She was too big, like a floating city. You got used to floors and corridors and doors and you knew you were still the centre of something human-shaped, big enough to feel important. But they'd changed their course hours ago, looped back to Destiny's last known position, and since then the awareness of nothingness had been growing on his mind. 

“No sir.” What did 'sir' mean when it was just the two of them? Not a lot, but he held to it anyway, like their continuing pretence that everything was OK. “I've dug through everything I know how to look through, and there's nothing out there we can reach at sublight speed. Closest system is nearly two years away and--” 

“We don't have any food.” Young nodded, with a faint flick of the lips like he'd expected the news but he appreciated having it clarified anyway. “Or water. We got three days – a week at the most – before we're dead.” 

“Yes,” Scott agreed, and it hit him all at once – how fragile they were, floating here in this little bubble of warmth and humanity and comradeship, while death pressed on the walls. Everyone he'd ever known or cared about was behind him now, except for Young. 

Young bowed his head and sighed. “Any water clouds, comets on the way?” 

The colonel was still working the problem, Scott thought, with a stir of warm fondness in the cage of his ribs. Neither of them had any idea how to harvest water in the vacuum, and it didn't solve the food issue, but the sheer dogged persistence of it cheered him up. 

At least until he looked. “No, sir, I don't see anything like that.” 

“Okay,” Young said, definitely, like he wasn't yet out of his depth. Scott loved that. Oh, don't get him wrong, he knew the man was flakey. Scott had known that ever since Dr. Simms on Icarus Base had taken him aside and asked him – off the record - to watch Young for symptoms of breakdown, suicidal ideation or acts. To report back if he thought intervention was necessary. But Young made it easy to believe, the way Greer believed, that he had everything under control at all times. 

“What's okay about it?” Scott grumbled, because they were alone out here, and rank was slipping away like hope, and it was getting harder and harder not to think about Chloe, and how she must feel, knowing he probably wasn’t ever coming home. 

Young reached up to the panel on the ceiling and flicked a switch labelled – in Scott's handwriting – 'Distress call.' 

“You think anyone will hear that?” Scott asked. It felt kind of bad, actually – kind of exposed. Instead of sitting in the dark quietly like a random rock, they were now yelling out that they were here and helpless. 

“I, uh,” Young smiled at him, soft and rueful and more at peace than Scott had seen him in a while. “I got a theory.” 

Scott tucked himself into one of the passenger seats, pulling up his feet. It felt colder in here now, though he was probably just imagining that, like he was imagining the slow drain on the shuttle’s fuel and air supplies, that came from them breathing and moving. Everything felt scarce and precious and kind of scary all at the same time. 

Resting his chin on his knees, he closed his eyes for a moment. But that was no good because the adrenaline, dissipating, had left him bone weary, and if he kept his eyes shut, despite everything, he would fall asleep. 

“What's your theory, sir?” 

“This is the last spot at which the aliens' tracker was operational, before we blew it up,” Young murmured, his voice tired too, soft and dark as the universe around them. “They're going to come investigate.” 

Scott felt he should be more horrified by the implications of this, but that whole ‘going to be scoured up in flames’ experience had shaken most of everything out of him, and he was going to have to rest now no matter what abysses were waiting on the other side. He yawned. 

“They're gonna hear the distress call.” 

Deep dark voice, full of the promise of power, like the Vox Dei note on the church organ that would shake the hollow spaces of Matt's chest and make the blood vibrate in his veins, until he didn't know if he felt awe or lust, if he should be exalted or ashamed. 

“And they're gonna come and get us.” 

A disquieting note, of Chloe panting in distress in her dreams, and even his semi-sleeping mind shied away, drawing closer to the only warmth, the only comfort in a thousand light-years. 

“That's when we take their ship.” 

Maybe it was Dr. Simms' request that started it, because Scott had felt obliged to watch, to look, and he'd liked what he saw. 

Maybe it was Telford, though. Because Telford strode around Icarus base like an A list movie star, trailing his own glory and the glory of his away team, somehow managing to give anyone not going on the mission the impression that they just did not make the grade. With a small, unimpressed smile, Young had let all of that roll off him, and had worked to make the rookies and rejects of his ground crew feel like they were something extraordinary too. 

He made it easy to fall in love with him. Scott knew he wasn't the only one who had. But just because it was easy, didn’t make it right. Father George had made that very clear to him, growing up. That time he'd been caught kissing Tom Mitchell in the vestry, Father George had given him such a thrashing he'd never dared think that way again. He'd thought he was cured. 

So when he found himself lying in his bunk thinking of big hands in his hair, holding him down, thinking of being speared and mastered and filled, it had been like letting his guardian down all over again. 

How Young might react if he ever found out – well, it didn't bear thinking about. Just the possibility of it tied Scott up in hot knots. 

Sins of the imagination were still sins, there was no getting away from it, and he couldn't do too much about controlling his thoughts 24/7. But he'd taken steps to make sure they at least never turned into sins of action. He'd started up with James, hoping she'd burn it out of him. And he'd done everything he could to convince himself this was not that kind of love. 

The air force was big on talk of family. Brothers, sisters, fathers, sons. _Those of you who've never had a place to call your own, you're ours now._

That spoke to Scott. It spoke to him like the voice of God. It was everything he’d ever wanted, and it came with the honour and self-sacrifice and surrender he’d hoped to find in the church if he'd only been stronger. 

So he'd tried with every ounce of determination in him to tell himself that he loved Young, _like a father._ It had even worked, mostly. 

But it made for some twisted dreams. 

He could feel one coming right now, and hoped, hoped even in sleep, that it would be one of the almost innocent ones, the ones that rang a little false but were comforting with it, because shit, if he was going to die out here, he did not want it to be in the midst of mortal sin. 

“Mmmmn” he managed, an unconvincing protest because he also wanted it very much. He could repent afterwards, as long as there was still time. He arched his back, a dream hand hard around the nape of his neck, pushing him down, letting him pretend he was helpless, that he could not stop what was about to happen even if he tried. That it was therefore not his fault. 

Another hand closed around his shoulder, deliciously hard. This was different. His blood jumped at the flesh and blood reality of it, better than dreams. Better-- 

It shook, and Scott stirred with the word “Daddy” almost out of his mouth, woke up, panting and disorientated and mortified, to find Young shaking him, no more than that. Just shaking him awake. 

For a moment he thought his embarrassment and shame were huge enough to swallow the universe between them. He scrambled for an explanation, an apology, but Young just gave him a sympathetic grin and jerked his head toward the view screen. 

The cabin lights were off, but blue and ruby luminescence lit the interior of the shuttle with a burning gas glow. Outside, where there had been only dim stars, was now a wall of grey metal, pockmarked with blue-hot windows. The alien ship loomed so close he could have tossed a stone onto it, the great curve of its glowing red central disk slicing a segment off the viewscreen, like a forest moon where all the trees were ablaze. 

The heat of Scott's dream dissipated in a rush that stirred the roots of his hair as he registered the dozens of alien weapons pointing straight at the shuttle, tracking its slow movement from port to starboard, towards the absolute darkness that was the alien launch bay. 

“Looks like our lift has arrived,” said the colonel, pointedly not noticing Scott's flushed, clammy face. Scott rubbed it dry on his sleeve as Young turned away to pry at the bench cover over the opposite bank of seats. “Help me get this up.” 

Young probably thought Scott had been dreaming about Chloe. Scott _should have been_ dreaming about Chloe. But thoughts of Chloe lead to thoughts of torture. She'd mentioned needles the size of her finger, and drowning, and pain that exceeded anything that could ever have been wrenched out of the body, because it had been fed straight into her head, mind to mind. 

_St. Jude, St. Christopher, pray for me. If we get through this, I promise, I'm going to stick by Chloe. I'm going to repent of this sin and never think of it again. I promise. She's going to be the only one I think about, if I get home._

Amazing how venal a prayer like that seemed in the light of that wall of guns. Dropping the whole tangle in the hands of the saints, Scott got his fingers under the other end of the opposite bench and concentrated on working it open. 

There was a narrow, coffin-like space inside. When they had opened the other bench, Young handed Scott his pistol and nodded. “In you get.” 

“They're going to know we're here, sir.” 

“Maybe,” said Young. “But better than catching a spray of bullets as they come through the door, right?” 

Now the alien ship was like a small country in the viewscreen, up and up and spilling out of view on every side. Scott wanted to laugh and to scream at the same time, but managed to avoid doing either. “How the hell are we going to take a ship this size, just the two of us and one gun?” 

Young inclined his head as if to say that this was a fair point. He looked like he was almost enjoying himself. Like this was a holiday for him. Sin and saints aside, Scott found himself grinning back, responding to the man's calm certainty, yet again, almost despite himself. 

“I don't know,” Young admitted, watching Scott fold himself into the bench and lowering the cover over the top. “Let's just try to stay alive for now. We can think about more once we're on board.”


	4. Chapter 4

As if this day wasn't shit enough, Destiny lurched under Greer's feet as they moved fast through all the corridors that didn't have doors. It was a longer route but it wasn't one that Rush could close from his control room where he sat like a spider in the centre of his web. The rumble sounded like thunder but Greer knew enough by now to recognise it as artillery fire. 

"Looks like we got company," he said, laconic-like because man, words didn't cut it at a time like this. But he was glad of whatever it was out there picking a fight. He really wanted to smack the entire universe in the face right now. 

TJ toggled her radio, "Anyone near a window? What have we got?" 

She was holding it together pretty damn well. Greer wouldn't have immediately IDed her as someone who fucked shit up when she was mad, but he had to admit he was impressed. 

"Two of those alien ships just dropped out, ma'am," came Barnes's voice from the radio. "The ones that took Chloe and Rush. They're sitting out there shooting at us." 

TJ gave a hard exhale, maybe a laugh, maybe an exclamation of disbelief that the world could be this unfair. That attitude at least, Ron's father had cured him of. It always could be crap, and it always could get worse. 

"Well someone out there don't like us today," he said, just to let the universe know he was on to it. 

TJ turned to him, stiff faced like he'd seen her before, that time when she wouldn't let him blast the bugs that killed Gorman. "I need to know you can keep it together, Greer. When we find Rush. I don't want anyone else 'accidentally' killed." 

Well, shit. Greer was not thinking about the colonel right now - about how the guy had kind of single mindedly set out to prove Ron's father had been wrong. About how he'd shown that people do come back for you, that just one lone person could be worth every effort - that at the end of the day you're not all alone. He wasn’t thinking about that – he was doing his job. But he'd got kind of used to the idea that the person he was serving with would always have faith in him. 

TJ didn't, that was clear enough. TJ looked at him and saw what everyone else saw, saw an angry black man unable to control himself. 

Now Young had known without being told that when Greer decked Telford it had been because Telford deserved it. God knew why that man didn't see him as an animal to be contained like everyone else did - like Telford and Camile did, like Rush did, like... shit... it looked like TJ did too, but Greer was gonna miss that. He'd carry on without it just fine, but things would hurt that little more. 

"No ma'am," he said bitterly, "Anyone I kill, it's going to be very deliberate. You can count on it." 

She let it ride, and he forgave her something for the fact that she was doing a hard job well and not expecting to be coddled or sweet-talked. Maybe her trust was something that had to be earned first. He could live with that. 

It just made him think of Scott better though. The guy'd had all that fly-boy training behind him, all that 'we're the intellectual cream of the crop, guys, not like those stupid grunts in the marines' and he'd still come out of it treating Greer like his brother. 

God damn it. How the hell could they take away his two best people at once and not expect him to be a little peeved about it? He noticed no one had lectured TJ about _her_ temper when she had Camile in a headlock, but Greer was supposed to be chill about the whole thing? 

Not that seeing Camile in a headlock hadn’t been the best thing that had happened all day. 

"You're not actually going to kill anyone though? Greer?" 

In more ways than one, Eli wasn't keeping up. Greer took him by the elbow and dragged him along, less roughly than he might have done if the kid hadn't looked so devastated and destroyed. 

"Like the LT ordered. Not unless she says so." 

"But it must have been an accident. There must be some kind of explanation. I mean Chloe - Chloe ran off to... she knew something. She was trying to stop it. I'm sure she was." 

Yeah, Eli had a face that screamed 'I'm sure of it.' Sure, he'd look that wild around the eyes if he really had no doubts. But whatever. Greer was pretty clear himself on who it was that really needed to be thrown out of an airlock here, and Miss Armstrong, however misguided she may have been, was not it. 

The ship shuddered again as they rounded the final corner and ducked under the sill of the new control room door. Bunch of white glowing components, like different sized donuts on a stick, and Chloe backing away into a corner, hands over her mouth and her eyes fixed on Eli. 

Rush bent over a console, cool as you please. Greer's rifle leapt into his hand like it was eager. All that talk about the greater good? He just knew the greater good of everyone on this ship would be advanced like fuck if he put a bullet through Rush's lying face. 

"Oh," said Rush, looking up, seeing TJ's handgun trained on his heart, Greer's rifle on his forehead. 

The whole world paused. God took his attention off distant galaxies and looked down on them to see what they would do, and Greer was calm. He'd got this covered. He was. In. Control. 

Then Rush dismissed them. His gaze snapped to Eli as if he had decided that no one else in the room was worthy of his attention. "Eli, I need your help." 

Not God himself could have stopped Greer from crossing the room in three steps and driving the butt of his rifle into Rush's mouth. The guy was flung across the room, but he twisted in the air, landed on his feet, and came back fighting. Scratch the surface, Rush was ghetto as fuck underneath. Greer might have respected that, on another day. 

"You get down on the ground. Get down on the ground, hands on your head, right now!" 

"Sergeant," TJ said, warningly, staying by the door where she could cover the whole room. 

"I'm not killing him, Ma'am. I'm just stopping him from handling the controls." 

"Eli," Chloe's small voice cooled the emotional tone of the room, just a little. She sounded as wobbly as Eli did. Whatever else she'd been in on, the murder part had obviously come as a surprise. "Eli, I know this is... This is awful. But we really have to fix the shields." 

She looked TJ right in the gun, straight backed, plucky for a civilian. "Please. The aliens will collapse the shields and then they'll come and take us all. Or they'll try to collapse the shields and end up blowing us up. Rush is trying to strengthen the shields so we can hold together until the jump. They tracked us here somehow. Maybe the tracker gave a final burst of course data before it was destroyed, and that’s how they found us this time, but the tracker is gone now. If we can just jump they won't be able to find us again. You can do what you like, then. But just let us do this now. Please. For everyone." 

Eli's lip wobbled. He looked like he was about to cry. Sounded it too - gutted and as betrayed as they all felt. "So you sent Young and Scott out to blow up the tracker, and then you _killed them_ , and now you're saying 'let's all be friends'?" 

Rush had not got down on the ground. His hands were half-heartedly raised and his face turned away so that the muzzle of Greer's rifle pressed against his jaw, but he looked so unimpressed still, so angrily contemptuous, that Greer was tempted to pull the trigger just to wipe the expression off his face. 

"I'm going to say this one more time. I do not know what happened to the shuttle. Even with you fighting me, there should have been two seconds to lock down after I had everything. But when those two seconds came, the shuttle simply wasn't there. I can only assume that someone had taken it outside the shields by that point, to avoid it being destroyed when they engaged." 

Eli sputtered like a drop of water on a midsummer road. "And you couldn't have just _told us_ about the two second thing beforehand? So they would’ve known they weren't going to get vaporized, and they maybe would have stayed?" 

Rush's face went blank and clear, the way it did when he'd lost his temper enough to actually be telling the truth. "If you had just stopped fighting me, it would never have been an issue." 

By the door, TJ made a kind of choking noise, took a step forward, looked like she was torn between giving Eli a hug and kneeing Rush in the balls. 

"Oh my God!" Eli exclaimed, turning away and covering his face. "You're seriously blaming _me_? You son of a bitch." 

"You sure I can't shoot him now?" Greer asked, because TJ looked like she was on the brink of losing her shit, and she needed something to concentrate on that wasn't her own rage. 

It seemed to help. She eased the white knuckled grip on her handgun and took a deep, shaking breath. And another. And then she impressed Greer by acting like a proper officer - moving on, working the problem. 

"We'll discuss this later. Eli? Are they right about the shields?" 

Eli bared his teeth and drew near to a console as though it might bite him, but a moment later his shoulders sagged and he was reading data like a champ. "I think- I think they might be right. If we tried to shoot back, the power drain on the shields would destabilise us. Maybe blow us up, certainly leave us vulnerable to - you know - _alien probes_. I can... I can maybe divert some power from secondary systems. I- I don't know if I can get it done in time on my own." 

TJ's grieving process had obviously gone from hot rage to cold rage in that undecided moment. Now she looked like she was carved out of high grade steel. "Rush will help you." 

"Oh, will he now?" said Rush, just as Greer scoffed, "You sure you want him back pressing buttons?" 

"Yes, he will, because Doctor Rush doesn't want to be blown up any more than the rest of us do." TJ levelled a flat, implacable look at Rush that reminded Greer of the Colonel, and he had to thank the universe for that hot skewer to the gut at a time like this. 

"That part you might be right about." Rush lowered his hands. When he cautiously approached a console across from Eli, Greer let him. 

Greer had a bad thought. A terrible thought, and he didn't know whether it ought to be shared or not. But if there was a tiny little chance and he'd done nothing... 

"So Scott or the Colonel might have flown the shuttle away before we jumped last time?" he started, conscious of TJ's attention, and Eli's tilted head that said he was listening too. "Suppose those aliens had come looking for their transmitter? Suppose they'd picked them up?" 

"Greer," said TJ, but he didn't know what that was - if it was _I don't want to hear this_ , or _I have to hear the worst._

"We know those aliens like to collect people, right?" 

Chloe made a sound, but again, he didn't know if it was protest cause she'd connected the dots and couldn't stand to think of Scott in those aliens’ hands, or if she was just remembering her own ordeal and desperate to get him to shut up about it. 

"What are you saying, Master Sergeant?" TJ asked, and God, yeah, he should have kept his mouth shut on this one. He should have carried it alone. That's what the colonel would have done. The colonel was a fucking graveyard for things too terrible for other people to know. 

"I'm saying - what if they're alive and on board one of those ships right now? We jump, and they can't track us, we're going to lose any chance of ever getting them back." 

Rush gave an incredulous laugh. "And if we stay here, we're all dead. We don't even know if they survived. You're talking conjecture on top of conjecture. It's ridiculous." 

TJ put her left hand over her eyes. Greer watched her bite her lip until blood showed on her teeth, and okay, he was going to cut her some slack now because she was solid diamond. Whatever she decided, he'd back. 

"There's nothing we can do to save them now," she said, her voice thick, reluctant, but not even the delicate tendrils of her hair shaking. "And whatever you people may think, my priority is still to take everyone home. Fix the shields. Let's get out of here."


	5. Chapter 5

Scott’s blood made a hydraulic rushing noise in his ears as he lay in the pitch darkness, waiting to be found. A shudder through the floor was the only sign the shuttle had been gently deposited by tractor beam in the alien hangar, but soon after he could hear scratching at the outer doors, and then they opened. 

Ssshm ssshm came footsteps soft as the padding paws of great cats. He felt like he had when he was five, with the covers over his head, telling himself that the monsters could not see him, would not guess he was there. They would though, wouldn't they? It was kind of obvious that the benches were the only thing human-sized. They'd be the first place Scott would look. 

A thud, and a chattering clatter and caw of harsh reptilian voices up by the nose of the shuttle. Sound of something gurgling in tubes that reminded him with a wrung out pang of how thirsty he was and how much he also wanted to pee. And then ssshm ssshm came the footsteps back again, and the doors whirred closed. 

Maybe the aliens had not watched the same B movies Scott had grown up with? Maybe hiding in furniture was an un-thought-of concept to them? Maybe bedcovers really were bullet-proof vests to the things that lived in the dark? He breathed deep as he could without noise in the stuffy confines of his hiding place, eased the grip on his M9, and then almost dropped it at the tap tap thud, deafening loud to his straining ears on the side of his bench. 

Morse code: _Open up._

He cracked the top and climbed out. Some kind of cylindrical device had been set up by the pilot's seat. Columns of crystalline arrays in matrixes of fluid were coupled by fibreoptic cables to the shuttle's computers. He guessed the Nakai scientists really weren't wise to human tricks after all. They'd come in, found the shuttle empty, and were now running a download while they went for a cup of tea. 

Or they were right outside the doors, waiting for Young and Scott to come out. 

The colonel had armed himself with a piece of ornamental trim pried from the inner edge of his bench. He gave Scott a grin as he flattened his back to the edge of the doors. “Ready?” 

Scott followed suit on the other side. “What's the plan, sir?” 

“We're still on step one right now. Survive, find somewhere we can hide out. Then we'll think.” 

Well that was simple enough, and Scott wasn't sure he wanted to contemplate anything long term at the moment either. Easier to just go with it, to trust. “Ready then, sir.” 

Young hit the door release and they both froze as blue light and damp rolled in, the smell of seaweed and honey-melon almost oppressive. After three breaths, no one had stormed inside or shot at them, so Young eased a shoulder round the jamb, Scott covering him. 

A huge, cathedral-like room where at least a hundred of the alien shuttlecraft sat parked in fish-scale curves. Three were powered up, the rest dark. Over by the largest door two blue aliens stood close together, heads bowed over some kind of illuminated device, maybe reading off data from the shuttle's computer, maybe doing some other kind of fascinating alien stuff. Scott wasn't sure but he didn't want to wait for them to look up. 

“With me,” Young had had the same thought, apparently. He was out and into the shadow of the shuttle's stubby wing already. He didn't look like he was rushing – he looked unhurried, lazy-slow as always, but Scott still had to work hard to keep up while keeping silent. 

From the shuttle's shadow to the curve of red glass that made the Nakai craft look like big bugs with ruby eyes. From there behind the engines of another and now there were three hulls between them and the oblivious Nakai scientists, and they could put on a burst of speed and run for the small service hatch that stood open under glowing oval writing half way along the far wall. 

They ducked through, and Scott had swung from terror now and into glee. See, this was what he'd signed up for – storming an enemy's fortress under their very noses. Long odds, heroic battles? Yes. 

Young paused outside the door to look in both directions down what seemed like featureless metal corridors dewed with cold moisture. To the right, Scott could see strips of aquamarine light that refused to coalesce into a shape he could interpret. To the left, the corridor split into three. 

“This way,” Young set off towards the lights, like he still knew what he was doing. 

“You cannot expect me to believe you've done this before too, sir.” Scott laughed. 

Young's 'shut the fuck up' look managed to be wry at the same time. “Something like.” 

He did seem to know where he was going, leading them over two intersections and then into what looked like a storage closet. Scott closed the door behind them and set his back to it with a sigh of relief. 

“When I came looking for Chloe, I had a chance to scope the place out. It's not the same ship, but it's the same layout.” 

Scott and TJ were agreed that to get the colonel to open up about anything, you had to just come right out and ask the question, pursue him for an answer, and not him shut the subject down or run away. But there was nowhere for him to run in here, so Scott thought it was safe enough to ask something that had been bugging him for a while. “Did you know Rush was on that ship?” 

The sharpness of Young's turn toward the wall could have been called a flinch. There was water everywhere on this ship and some of it passed through clear tubes just above elbow-height. The brackets that held them on bent upto let them pass around the door, and the colonel reached out and twisted a length until something cracked. Immediately, water began to drip from the mount. Scott's saliva glands ached at the sight, but his mouth remained dry. He let the colonel drink first then stepped up and filled his cupped hands. 

It tasted brackish, dusty, faint hints of oil. Not quite as delicious as the chalky sand-filled spring on the lime planet, but close. Close. 

“Not when I arrived,” Young admitted, water dripping from between his knuckles, his gaze turned downward. “I went looking for Chloe, found Rush instead, in some kind of floation tank. I broke him out, but the connection was severed before I could do any more.” 

Scott's heart clenched in his chest in a complicated squeeze of gratitude and bewilderment and a little bit of hurt. “Why didn't you say anything?” 

Young looked up, caught his eye briefly, looked back down. “What would it have changed?” 

_Well, Chloe would have felt better about you, knowing Rush wouldn't have been there to save her if it hadn't been for you. I'd have known it was because of you I got her back. I’d have been... I'd have been_ – here it came like a swelling orchestral crescendo – a kind of worship that verged on idolatry. Then the hurt was back, because Young hadn't trusted him, hadn't confided.

But why the hell should he have done? He was Scott's commander, not his confidante. Fuck. 

Time to change the subject. “So, um. Have we got a plan now? I mean, we don't understand how any of the ship's systems work. We can't even identify the controls, let alone figure out how to use them. This is where we really need Eli.” 

“Mm.” Young hunkered down with his back to the wall, his face closed off, self-reliant, impenetrable, as he thought things through. 

“Or Rush, even.” 

That raised an ironic smile, but Young said nothing about what he thought might be happening aboard Destiny, whether he thought Rush's behaviour had been a murder attempt or something bigger. Scott really wanted to know – wanted to be sure that Chloe was alright, and Eli too. God, he hoped Eli was not blaming himself for this, but he probably was. It wasn't just for their own sakes that they had to survive. 

“You're right,” said Young at last. “We need a scientist.” 

Scott laughed, because that was funny, right? “Which is a shame because--.” 

“So we go get one.” 

OK, Scott was missing something there. “But they're all on Destiny.” 

“Yeah?” Young gave him a mild look. “I was thinking one from over here.” 

That was a whole realignment of Scott's mental universe – he felt like the deck had given way under him. He'd been thinking of them as 'aliens' and 'enemies', and all along Young had been thinking of them as 'untapped resources?' Scott got himself under control before he blurted out something stupid. He figured this was a teaching moment – this was the point where he really connected with the idea that nothing was a lost cause until they gave up. But shit, no wonder the colonel was the colonel. He was downright relentless like this. 

Still, a couple of objections came to mind. “Um, we can't communicate with them either, sir. How's that going to work?” 

“There I _do_ have an answer,” Young got up to listen at the door. “Rush picked their brains by some kind of mind control device, right? I'm pretty sure if he could do it, I could too.” 

“Unless it's math based.” 

The colonel's expression didn't noticably change, but Scott figured that was a shrug regardless, “Then we just shove a gun in its face and yell.” 

These aliens really didn't do human things like surveillance or patrols. It was hard to believe how easy it was for them to sneak around two intersections and go to ground behind a bank of oval consoles in a room centred on an empty upright tank of water. 

Scott recognised it from Chloe's choked descriptions, had a moment where he could almost see her floating there, with her hair in moving tendrils around her face and her eyes wide and frightened. Yeah, he was not going to be sorry if he had to blow away a couple of these blue creatures, or all of them, come to that. 

At Young's hand signal, he reached up and took the two triangular devices off the top of the console that sheltered him, ducking back down into the shadow beneath it. His sleeve caught on a loose panel as he tried to squeeze himself smaller. There was a shuffing sound of padding in the corridor. The Nakai were coming. 

As he tugged, the loose panel came away to show a small crawlspace, ample for a Nakai but a squeeze for him. He eeled inside. Young had already found a similar hiding place under the base of the tank. He pulled it closed as the Nakai came in. 

Scientists, Young had said. Scott had been thinking of them as monsters, had focussed only on the wrongness of the shape of their legs, and their harsh, incomprehensible voices, their turtle-like beaks. They were the bogeymen of Chloe's dreams, but as he crouched in the dark and watched them manipulate the clear crystal and blue light of their consoles, trading remarks back and forth, he could see familiar dynamics. 

The three in the middle of the room were easy with each other. Hard to tell with the snarls of the language if they were chatting or fighting, but when one dropped a leaf of metal, another picked it up and handed it back. When one caught the open hem of its ridiculous wetsuit on a protruding wire, another knelt down to free it, and they all made a gurgling noise that he thought might be laughter. 

They did remind him of the science team back home – Park, Volker, Brody. 

The fourth, the one who worked alone on its own console, in silence, did not remind Scott of Rush. There was a grayish cast to its blue skin and a dimness to its glowing eyes that said it was old or weak, and when the others moved too expansively, it cringed away. It watched them constantly, and although its face was no more readable to Scott than theirs, over the hour they waited, he gained the strong impression that it was afraid. 

It was the one he least wanted to put through another traumatizing experience. So naturally, when the other three left, it was the only one that remained, alone. 

A glance at Young's hiding place showed the hatch opening, quiet, quiet. Scott extricated himself, staying in the shadow, calling on every skill he'd ever learned to make no noise. Fortunately the tank and the water in the pipes around the walls bubbled, masking the faint rubber on metal squeak as he got his feet under him. 

It had enough time to look up before he was across the distance and on it, and Scott knew what it saw – black clad monsters coming out of the walls – but he still clamped both hands around its bony mouth to hold it shut. A brief, very brief struggle was like fighting with a bird – the thing was light, hollow-boned even, would have stood no chance against him alone, let alone against both of them – and then Young took the interrogation device out of Scott's pocket and slapped it down above the creature's left eye. 

It went rigid in Scott's hands in a way that spoke of agony. He was about to say “This isn’t right!” when it slumped in his arms, only the faint flutter of gills behind its jaw letting him know it wasn't dead. 

“Let's get it back to our cubby,” Young moved to the doorway to check the corridors. He didn't look ruffled, but there was something in his manner that Scott liked to believe was a discomfort like his own. He hadn't thought this plan might involve torture. He hadn't signed up for that. He wanted to believe that the colonel hadn’t either. 

But he still picked the alien up and carried it, gangling and clammy like a sweating malnourished child, back to their hide out where they could threaten it in peace.


	6. Chapter 6

The floor of the mess was carpeted with terrified civilians. It didn't make TJ feel any better, though she wasn't sure what would. There was a blankness in the back of her mind, like one of those holes punched in the walls in horror movies. It was just a dark space at the moment, but something really bad was going to come out of it soon, and then maybe she'd wish she hadn't been born. 

Best to get on with things in the mean time. 

“The injured can be taken to the infirmary,” she said, Greer at one shoulder, James now at the other, her troops behind her. “Dunning, Marsden, escort them there. Organize a detail to guard the door. Make sure they don't leave until I've had a chance to check them over.” 

“Yes ma'am.” 

The crack in the wall was widening even as she spoke, but she was still angry, angry like cold wires running through her veins. Anger was the one thing holding her together so she was not letting go of it just yet. 

Camile got to her feet in the flood of contusions and concussions – hell of a lot of broken noses, swollen eyes, cut lips. No one had been too gentle about taking these people down, though she didn't see anything that looked like it was serious. Camile's cut had scabbed already, but there was a new bruise over her eyebrow and her hair was a rat's nest of corridor dust. 

Her expression was teary, but determinedly, almost stubbornly brave. “What now?” 

What now indeed. What TJ needed was to give herself time. Take an opportunity to grieve, so that she could empty that crack in her mind and fill it up again with duty and endurance. Then she would be able to think. But that wasn't going to be possible until after she'd dealt with this. 

Fine then. An enemy force had been defeated. Now they had to be contained. There were procedures, manuals that covered this situation, but she'd been too busy cramming medicine to be anything more than hazy on the detail. She had to stop the civilians from doing this again, and that meant restricting their access to the technology, and preventing opportunities to congregate and plot. 

If they thought they were being oppressed before, they really weren't going to like the real thing. 

“You and Doctor Rush will be confined to your rooms under guard until we have a chance to set up a court to try you for mutiny and murder. You will be allowed out to use the facilities, and for a scheduled hour of physical exercise, when you will be accompanied by a military guard.” 

Camile's brows twisted. She raised a bloodstained right hand to her forehead, but didn't protest. 

“The rest of you will be permitted to go back to your work under supervision. All vital facilities such as the gate room, the control interface room and the stones room will remain under armed guard. Civilian assemblies will not be permitted. Any meeting of more than two civilians will take place under military supervision or not at all. Kino surveillance will be increased to make sure.” 

Camile's hand came down, and the look of devastation in her eyes was washed over by indignation. “You can't do that!” 

“I can do whatever I like,” TJ said, conscious of Greer's scoff behind her, and of James' anger like a warmth on her side. 

“We're in this mess in the first place because you people seem to have forgotten that we have rights!” 

TJ laughed. “You really think that was us being unreasonable? You have no idea. Maybe when you've seen us with the gloves off you'll finally appreciate how gentle we've been with you all along.” 

This was the wrong way to go. She knew it already. She knew you didn't heal a wound by opening it wider. But, God. Let them feel it just a little while, just enough to know how much it hurt. It was Gorman's face she was thinking of now. Gorman with all the skin flayed off him, with the water sucked out of his eyeballs, because he had given his life to defend these people. These people who had murdered-- 

“I demand to be able to speak with the IOA. When my superiors hear of this--” 

Except maybe it hadn't been murder. Maybe they were just lost forever. Marooned in some kind of twisted justice. Did that make it any better? 

She thought of pointing out that she controlled access to the stones. That if she didn't choose to tell Earth about any of this, Camile's superiors would never know. She thought of pointing out that the IOA had no power here that she did not permit them to have. But she was thoroughly, abruptly, sick of the sight of everyone. 

“O'Hara, Reynolds, escort her to her cabin and keep her there. The rest of you, this ship is now under military law. Back to your quarters. No congregating. A list of your duties will be made available to you in due course.” 

She had to go and write that. She had people in the infirmary to treat. She couldn't spare the time to-- she couldn't-- 

They filed out around her, and Greer's people spread out to turn away those who tried to argue with her, to make sure there was an armed soldier to every five civilians. It didn't give her peace to see Volker startle like a frightened mouse away from Rivers as he turned the corner towards his quarters, or Brody with everything tight about him from his shoulders to his lips. Silence in the corridors except for the scurry of feet and the miasma of resentment and fear. 

And she was in charge of it all. She needed to go to the infirmary. She needed to go to the Colonel's office and... 

No. No, she couldn't do that. She couldn't-- 

She needed for nobody to see her face. Trying to press the back of her hand over her eyes, she found her fingers were shaking, her arms were shaking. It was the silence, that was what it was. It was being mostly alone now, mostly safe. 

By her side still – the only one left – James made a choked sound that had possibly been meant as a laugh. “Come on,” she said, wound a long, muscular arm around TJ's shaking shoulders and tugged. TJ followed because she couldn't do otherwise. The hole in the wall had opened and all the cockroaches of grief were flowing out, swarming over everything they touched. It was all blackness and movement in there right now and she didn't want to look at any of it. 

“I have to get to the infirmary.” 

“No,” said James firmly, and pushed her into the lift where she could be blessedly behind closed doors. “Cuts and bruises. Cole can deal with it. What you need to do is get yourself together. Cry tonight – Hell, I'll come and help – but right now you're what we've got. Hold it together.” 

James's eyes were shiny too, and her nose red, her face was set in the angry scowl of a woman who really wants to sob, but won't. 

_You're not...,_ TJ thought, resisting the temptation to slide a hand across her stomach and feel for the flutter. But then she might not be either, _please God,_ and Vanessa had obviously, obviously loved Scott a hell of a lot more than Scott had ever known, and fuck this. Fuck all of it. She couldn't-- 

She squeezed the heels of her hands into her eyes until bursts of light filled the darkness in her head. Nodded once, “Okay” and then again, more firmly. “Okay. I've got it.” 

James nodded, surreptitiously rubbed her own eyes dry and hit the door control to let them out. “You're going to have to report this, you know.” 

So she thought she'd got it together, but that suggestion knocked it all out from under her again. She staggered against the wall as her knees refused to lock. 

The thought of it. She'd have to go to O'Neill's office in someone else's body. She'd never met him, the general, but he sounded terrifying, semi-legendary. They said he could make a joke out of anything, and she recoiled with everything in her from the idea of him laughing at this. Expecting her to. 

He would send Telford to take command. 

James gave a strangled laugh, put her arms around TJ and hugged. 

“Oh!” TJ breathed, hugging back almost frantically, desperately grateful for the primal human comfort of it as she let herself fall apart for five minutes. Why not? It was good for her mental health to get it out. This was what she felt and so she would fucking let herself feel it, so that afterwards she could get back up and go on. 

They cried it out, James's face tucked into her neck, so the tears made a damp patch on her collar. TJ hiding her eyes in James's thick, springy hair. 

“This is, ah,” James got herself back together first, trying to laugh. “Not very military of us.” 

“Doctor's orders,” TJ croaked, feeling wrung out and wobbly and not quite so alone. “Now I prescribe tea to rehydrate us both, and then we'll think about what to do next.” 

She disentangled herself reluctantly from James's embrace and headed towards the mess. The pressure had been drawn off for the moment, the grief lanced. She knew better than to think it would heal any time soon, but look, it was manageable for now and she was still here, and there was a lot to do. 

“I need someone to take over the majority of my duties in the infirmary. The colonel had dossiers on all the civilians. I'll need to read those through and decide on work parties. While we're low on food, the civilians who aren't physically active can be given fewer calories. I'll need to work out those numbers. And I--” 

They came into the mess just as Eli stumbled in from the opposite corridor. “You... You put Rush in custody?” he said, seeing her. He looked like she felt, but there was something chancy, uncertain, about the set of his mouth. “I mean, you locked him in his room with no access to the computers?” 

“Yes,” her anger surged back like a malevolent spirit. “When he has access to the computers, people die.” 

Eli picked at the collar of his hoodie. “Yeah. And, don't think I'm not really upset about that, because I'm... I would have done _anything_. I mean.” 

He fell silent, picking at his hem. Started again. “The thing is that we tried it with just me doing the science stuff, and it's too much. I know it sucks, but we need him. We need him figuring out how to make this ship work, not... not stuck in a cell, even if that is kind of... I mean, look, I'm as angry as you are about this but. Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he didn't mean for any of this to happen.” 

She wasn't willing to hear that yet. Perhaps tomorrow. This couldn't go on – this desire to punish every civilian on the ship. It wasn't helping. But right now it was the direct consequence of their own actions, and they could bear it and learn something from it before she eased up. 

“You can't tell me the mutiny was a mistake, Eli. That kind of organization doesn't happen without careful forethought.” 

“But--” 

“We're in FTL now, so we're probably not going to be under attack for a while. You can use that time to get up to speed.” 

“We're going to have a trial, Eli.” James pushed a mug of tea into TJ's hands, coming to the rescue in many ways. “Once TJ's reported this, chances are they'll want Rush back there for a trial. They should swap him out with another senior scientist. Someone you can work with. It's... it's going to be okay. That's right, isn't it, LT?” 

“That's right,” she said, the tea like hot sand in her mouth, because she didn't want to report this. Maybe Young and Scott were alive, like Greer suggested. Maybe somehow they would find their way home. It shouldn't be to a ship that had grown used to being without them. It shouldn't be only to find that they had been replaced. 

Reporting it would make it real, and she wasn't ready for that. 

Besides, there was something about Telford that set off every warning bell she possessed. She could wait a little longer for some kind of miracle that meant she wouldn't have to open the gates for Telford to take command. Even if she had to engineer the miracle herself. 

“We're going to sort it all out,” Eli, she said wearily. “Just, maybe not today.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

Young caught Scott's look of badly hidden disapproval with some relief. He really was a good kid. A desire to torture one of the creatures who hurt his girl would be understandable, but Young would have found it hard to respect. Like he found it hard to respect that pain was apparently the default setting on these things. He remembered too well what that had felt like from when Rush had used it on him. 

“Okay,” he said, cautiously touching the transmitter to his skin, “lets see if I can get this adjusted before it wakes up.” 

A scratching tingle across his forehead and then whoa. Its dreams were right in front of his eyes like a heads up display. He could feel that it still hurt, but he was an outside observer to the pain itself. There had been no visible sliders or switches on the device, but when he thought about ramping the pain down, there was a sensation like he had nearly engaged with something. He tried again, concentrating harder on the fact that this was a command. 

The feedback from the sleeping alien slid smoothly into... well, comfort was the wrong word, because he could still feel it, twitchy, nervous, frightened even in its sleep. 

It lay with its fragile blue limbs curled up like a dog, and he could see right through its skull into its brain. He'd felt how insubstantial it had been, when they overpowered it. It was a spun glass little thing, and it was scared. 

Maybe it shouldn't go picking fights with people who could take it apart then. Except that he had noticed how careful it had been not to do that – not to be noticed, not to attract attention, not to get in the way. There were silver lines on its long hands that looked like scars, and he was almost sorry he was going to have to wake the poor bastard and give it another very bad day. 

He closed his eyes, to bring its dreams and memories into clearer view and just let them wash over him a while, trying to figure out what he was seeing, trying to get a feel for the lie of the land. 

“Can you tell what it knows?” 

Scott was not a bad lieutenant. He had a tendency to give up too soon, and a tendency to expect other people to hand him answers, but he asked intelligent questions, and that would stand him in good stead, long term. There was going to be a long term for Scott, because Young was going to make that happen. 

“It's not that easy, lieutenant. I'm not understanding a lot of what I'm seeing. Give me five.” 

Impressions – two other Nakai that this one had been involved with? Cared for? They had eggs together and this one had incubated them in its body, and not one had lived. It was a very bad... something. Something not quite male or female. Something that already had a low place in Nakai society. 

Not being able to bring eggs to live birth apparently meant it was worthless as a person. There was a machine that could have done that, but its... mates? _Shit this was weird._ Its mates had chosen to entrust their partial-offspring to it, so that the hatchlings would have all three parents. They had done it that honour. And it had let them down. It had killed all the children. 

“Ah!” He pulled back, full of an emotion he couldn't even put a human name to, and okay, he was not going to call this thing 'it' any more. What had that memo said? The one Camile had him read as soon as she arrived on Icarus base. Who’d have thought _that_ would come in handy now? Oh yeah. He was going to call this person 'ze'. 

“You okay sir?” Scott gave him a worried look from where he stood by the door, listening to the occasional footsteps passing by outside. 

“Yeah. I... uh.” No way was he discussing all of this with Scott. “I don't think math is going to be a problem.” 

Scott smiled, looking looser now no one was obviously suffering. “Is it weird in there?” 

“You got no idea.” 

He breathed deep, put aside any thoughts about what might be happening on Destiny with Rush at large – TJ would handle it – and went back in. 

Ze had shifted to something happier, and there _was_ math this time, glittering like a hoard of jewels in hir mind, and – the sight of it was a shock, from the outside, seen through eyes that saw better in ultraviolet than his own – Destiny. 

Destiny like a promise of redemption. Destiny chased like a lost love. Curiosity, yes, like a famine, but hope too. Ze thought of Destiny as an artist thinks of their life's work, as the thing that makes everything else worthwhile. 

Maybe his surprise bled over, but the alien twitched, and the light behind hir eyes flared as ze woke. Ze echoed back his surprise, but all messed up with terror, as ze scrambled onto hands and knees and scuttled two paces away until hir back hit the wall. 

Instinctively, Young raised both hands, in a gesture any human would recognize as _look, I'm not holding anything. I'm not going to hurt you._ But it was evidently not a Nakai gesture. Their captive cringed and huddled away. 

Ze didn't think of crying out. Interesting. Although ze was scared of him, Young could tell ze was more scared of the other Nakai. Scared of letting everyone else know that ze'd failed again, fucked up again, allowed hirself to become a potential problem that other people would have to solve. Again. 

The pang of empathy Young felt was so strong ze looked up at it, uncurled a little, watching him in a half crouch like an ugly blue cat waiting to be spritzed in the face with cold water. 

_Me too_ , he thought. Didn't know if ze would pick up on his memories of failure and shrinks and gardening leave and being given a pity-command while he was trying to pretend he wasn't fucking ruined and useless, but ze was welcome to if ze could. It wasn't like any of that was a secret. _You got a name?_

The burst of information in his head made absolutely no sense. Blue shapes he couldn't even delineate. But his incomprehension in return must have got through. 

“Rrt!k” 

Yeah. He didn't think he had vocal cords for that clicking noise. “Artic?” he said for Scott's benefit. Close enough. “Young.” 

“Ng,” ze said. Which, yeah, that was fair. 

“Ah, hey,” Scott gave a half-wave from his post by the door, his face bright with ridiculous friendliness. “Scott.” 

How anyone could look at the kid and see an acceptable sacrifice still baffled Young, and he fought down an inappropriate surge of anger before Artic got freaked by it. 

“S!t.” 

“Yeah,” Scott grinned, pleased and proud like they'd adopted a stray. And maybe that wasn't so far from the truth. 

Young pictured Destiny. Outside first, the great poetic sweep of her engines, then the view from the observation deck when they’d sunk into their first star. Artic uncurled, gaze fixed burning on his own, and he felt a kind of religious yearning from hir, a tremulous, scarcely hoped for joy. 

“You want to go there?” 

Scott cocked his head, reminding him that part of this conversation was not followable from the outside. “You want to go to Destiny?” 

Terror. But it was the terror of asking for something ze wanted so much ze knew it would break hir when it was withheld. It would be used as a bribe and then taken away at the last moment. None of the Nakai had ever been worthy to step on the ship of fate, and ze was the least worthy of all. 

“Chloe's going to freak, sir, if we turn up with one of these guys.” 

Scott asked good questions, and Young loved the kid, he really did, but man was it exhausting, continually having to try to live up to his expectations, getting the sense that he was continually failing. Tough, right? If this worked, then Chloe could deal with it. “You think she'd rather you didn't come back at all?” 

Young tried to make it clear that Scott was by the door. That any escape attempt was therefore doomed from the start. He got a resurgence of the cringe, and that was not what he wanted. What he wanted was to convince Artic that if ze wanted on Destiny he would take hir. That that was a promise he would keep. But that Artic would have to do hir bit to help make that possible. 

He thought of what he wanted to say, assembled a mental list of things that needed to be done. This ship had to find Destiny again. The weapons needed to be disabled so neither Destiny nor their vehicle could be shot at. 

He contemplated using the shuttle, but if they took the shuttle back, Rush could just lock them out again. One of the alien craft that grappled on and bored its own hole in the hull would be better. If he directed his mind that way he already knew Artic could fly one – they all could. It wasn't hard. 

Okay, so that was the rudiments of a plan. Time to see if they could really trust their unlikely ally. He reached up and detached the transmitter from his head. Gently, slowly, did the same with the receiver, Artic's skin slick and fish cold under his fingertips. Then he swapped them round. 

The receiver felt hard against his brow like the muzzle of a gun as he waited for Artic to dial up the pain, to tear right on in and shred what ze found. Mind to mind contact meant he could tell ze didn't believe this was happening. Still thought it was some kind of trick. 

“Go ahead and look,” he said, grimacing a little as ze did. It felt like wet spiders in the brain. “You want to study Destiny? You want to be worth something again? You can do both of those things with us.” 

Like spiders covered in cold gel, the thoughts went picking through his mind. He caught the backwash of contemplation, curiosity, discovery. He remembered that they had made something of the incubation-pouch human that had the potential to be stronger than either species separately. Perhaps if ze was allowed to progress down that road ze might even learn how to fix what was wrong with hirself. 

What? It was hard to think with the mental tendrils ruffling through his brain, but what? Was that Chloe? They'd done something to Chloe? Something that was still going on, still active? Fuck that! 

Artic startled back at the force of his anger. Improvement. It was an improvement. She was weak and useless, without function. The others had given her function. It was better. Better not to be useless. 

Young was damn glad Scott was not feeling this. That was an argument he didn't need right now. The intrusive, skittering mind in his mind was giving him a headache, but he knew what it meant to want, desperately, to be good for something again. 

_On our ship_ , he thought, with all the sincerity of a world view he'd had to fight for a lot recently, _you don't need to be useful to be important. On our ship, all you need to do is exist._

He offered hir the plan, such as it was. Felt it being picked up like a physical thing and examined, and then Artic took the transmitter from hir head and passed it back to him with delicate fingers. It felt weird, empty, having his own mind to himself again as he wondered what ze had decided. From his own point of view, it had now become a mission objective to make sure Artic or some other Nakai returned with them. What they had done to Chloe, presumably they could fix. 

He took the mind talk devices as carefully back, tucked them in his top pocket. 

“What happened?” Scott asked, hunkered by the door with Young's gun propped on his knee. 

Artic closed a hand like picked bird bones around Young's hand and to his astonishment ze shook it, like ze'd picked the gesture straight out of his mind. Presumably, of course, ze had. He wondered what else the cold spiders had seen, but it didn't stop him smiling and cautiously shaking back. 

“It looks like we have a deal.”

 


	8. Chapter 8

“I need to talk to TJ.” 

“Lieutenant Johansen.” 

TJ looked up from her bowl of paste. She hadn't got a lot of sleep, and maybe that was the reason the whole ship felt different to her this morning. Unfriendly, resentful, grudging. Or maybe that was just her. Today she had to draw a line under two lives that had been very dear to her, and move on without them. 

She wasn't ready. 

Of course it didn't help that the civilians were no longer allowed to sit together in the mess. They ate under the gazes of armed personnel who wanted them to know that they were pissed off and spoiling for a chance to show it. 

The mess was a tense place as a result. Silent, shell-shocked, stuck like her in that trough between a past she didn't want to get over and a future she didn't want to face. Which was why Chloe coming over to talk to her felt portentous, another bad omen. 

She'd really wanted to get through a single bowl of food before starting the business of the day but whatever. Medics and commanding officers did not get the luxury of down time. 

“It's okay, Rivers. She can call me TJ.” She dredged a smile out of her professional toolkit, though she didn't feel it. “Chloe – why don't you sit down. Are you here to complain at me too?” 

From all the reports she'd read before breakfast, Chloe had been deep in the organization of the mutiny. Whether she'd intended it or not, she was complicit in the killings. But hell, Chloe looked worse than TJ felt, her lips white and her eyes red, and her hair all over the place. She'd lost someone she loved too. However else they were divided, they were united in that. 

“You know yourself this can't go on,” Chloe settled to her seat with a solemn, almost serene certainty. “You can't look at this and think this is how it ought to be. You'll see that for yourself in time.” 

TJ saw it already, but that didn't mean she could do anything about it right now. You broke something, you had to wait for it to heal before you used it again. Even civilians ought to know that. An apology might have been nice, might have splinted the break a little, but didn't look like it was forthcoming. “And that was what you came to say, was it?” 

Chloe grimaced, as if _she_ had been hoping for an apology – as if she thought _she_ was being misjudged. Then she swallowed and looked aside. “No. I... I think there's something you ought to know.” 

TJ couldn't help the gentling of her voice, or the calm, understanding smile that came like second nature whenever someone used that tone. “What is it? You can tell me.” 

Chloe looked like a serviceman trying to nerve himself up to talk about an embarrassing itch, and TJ's huddling humanity gave a tiny warm pulse at the thought. Still there, waiting to come out when it was safe. 

“When we came back from the alien ship, Dr. Rush told me the aliens had put a tracker in him.” 

All kinds of things inside filled her with spikes at that, as numbness flared back into pain. “What?” 

“The one on the hull wasn't the only one. There's one inside Rush. Implanted near his heart. They're still following us. They are going to follow us as long as that thing is inside him.” 

TJ's food tasted of food all at once. The dim room brightened in front of her eyes. She was weary of being jerked about by her own limbic system, but here it came anyway, unstoppable as a tidal wave. Hope. Hope, like someone had turned the volume up on the whole universe. 

She caught Chloe's deep blue gaze, saw her own leap of the heart mirrored there in a determined conviction, and for a moment there was no barrier or gulf at all between them. “Are you saying that if Scott and Young are on that ship, they might still be following us? We might have a chance to get them back, next time we drop out?” 

Chloe raked a hand through her hair, combing out the most obvious snarls, and tried to smile. “I know it's a long shot. But if Greer was right, and they're there--” 

TJ's mind was darting off in every direction, she pulled it back and told it to shape up. “I'm not sure what we could do about it even if it's true. The other shuttle isn't spaceworthy, and the communication stone the colonel used to go look for you stopped connecting for some reason. Maybe...” 

Rush would call the things she was thinking of ridiculous risks, with the potential to blow everyone up for the faint possibility of rescuing two people. Stupid, from a mathematical point of view, but surely inevitable from a human one? 

“Maybe if we could let the mothership get close enough to Destiny we could send people across in space-suits. But the Ancient suits have no manoeuvringunits, so--” 

“Eli!” Chloe called across the tables to where Eli was sitting all alone. He got a surly look that said he was deliberately not hearing, and oddly enough the childishness of it made TJ want to smile. Humans being human – what else would you want them to be? 

Chloe gave an exasperated sigh. “Eli, come over here. We're talking rescue parties.” 

That brought him, laptop under his arm and an expression as of someone waking up after a nightmare. “Yeah, about that,” he said. “I've been going over what Rush had me do with the shields, and ah, digging back through the database...” He rolled gritty, bloodshot eyes “ _Really dry stuff._ But it looks like historically this was not the first rodeo for Destiny and our creepy stalkers.” 

TJ and Chloe exchanged a glance of female solidarity as they simultaneously decided to let him get it out before they brought him back on topic. It felt good, surprisingly. She hadn't been liking being at odds with half the ship, whether they had started it or not. 

“All the times Destiny's been up against these dudes when we weren't on board, she's just put everything into shields, they haven't been able to get through, she's jumped away unharmed and so on ad infinitum.” 

TJ opened her mouth to say _All we have to do is just sit there?_ but didn't get it out in time. 

“When we arrived,” Eli carried right on, unstoppable as a sled on a ski slope, “We started diverting power elsewhere. You know, to things like showers and life support and pumping water, and...” He gave TJ the sideways tilt of the head that said _You may not like this but I'm going to say it anyway._ “Shooting at things. All of which actually makes Destiny less able to defend herself.” 

OK, it needed a nudge by now. “And your point is?” 

Eli's startled smile looked like it hadn't expected to come back so soon, was caught in the dressing room without its makeup on. “My point is that as long as someone's able to switch most of the power back to shields just before we engage one of these things – keeping enough back for life support, obviously – we should be able to do the same. We should be able to just sit there while these guys do their worst and shrug it off until we go back into FTL. Which makes them like, a little bit less like Godzilla and a little bit more like that one annoying wasp you can't get rid of.” 

“So, all we have to do is put shields up to maximum and they can't damage us?” 

“That's what we think.” 

The room had been sullenly silent from the start, but now it had that special flavour of quiet that said everyone was listening in. TJ wasn't at all surprised when James slid onto the bench next to her. “I hear there's talk of a rescue plan?” 

“You've got EVA experience, haven't you?” 

“Yes ma'am. You want me to get Kinnear down here too? Two suits and he has twice my hours.” 

TJ felt she was walking out of quicksand. It was almost more than she could do to put a foot forward, but it was wading back to life. She clearly hadn't appreciated Chloe before as much as the girl deserved. “Let's finalize a plan first. Okay. So if we can survive another encounter with this thing, we can afford to let it catch up with us again. Eli, the only way we've got of getting people in to the Nakai mothership itself to break our people out is by spacesuit. Can you knock up some form of propulsion unit that can be used with the suits to take them over there?” 

“Lisa's the one who knows most about the suits,” Eli began, faltering at the look on her face. Chloe loved Scott, but what reason did Lisa have to help? TJ couldn’t trust Lisa with this. “Or, you know, they could just hold on to a kino and I could fly them across by kino remote.” 

“Am I allowed to have an opinion?” That was Brody from the far corner of the mess near the hot water dispenser, the centre of a proud island of solitude, marked out by a barricade of chairs. 

It was an annoyingly passive-aggressive way of making a suggestion, but TJ supposed the civilians were entitled to feel a little butthurt at the moment too. 

“I'd be glad to hear it.” 

“Are you really thinking of putting two people in our only viable spacesuits out there into a firestorm and expecting them to survive long enough to get on board the alien ship? And if you are, what do you think they can do when they get there? We don't even know for sure that the shuttle wasn't vaporized. And we need those suits.” 

“You're saying it's an unacceptable risk?” 

Brody looked like he was trying not to see the gazes turned in his direction. He took a deep breath and looked at her, mostly calm, utterly sincere. “Yes, I am.” 

He might be right. 

“It's not going to make much difference if it's one person or two,” James chimed in, looking sharp again, eager. “So I go over on my own, leaving one of the suits here in case it all goes bad. We've got to try, TJ. They'd do the same for us.” 

Brody scoffed. “It really is one rule for you and another for us, isn't it? I don't remember any of this when we left Rush behind.” 

“We didn't know he was alive!” James protested, and that was a sidetrack TJ didn't want to go down in the aftermath of mutiny. She turned the conversation back on track. 

“Mr Brody. Here's my dilemma. If we're not doing this, I'm going to need to report our situation to Homeworld Command. Once they know that the civilians on board staged an armed takeover, resulting in the death of our commanding officer, they're going to have to take action. At a minimum, they're going to put Telford in charge, and I think you remember what happened last time he was CO. Riley isn't even out of the infirmary yet.” 

She let a spoonful of protein paste slop back into her bowl in punctuation, letting him remember how glad everyone had been to see the back of Telford. “As you know, Colonel Telford thinks this ship should be run on a more rigorous military basis. Obviously that's not a problem for me, but...” 

Brody opened his mouth. She cut him off. 

“So one, Telford on board. And two, they'll want to hold tribunals on Rush and Wray. Probably want them both on Earth for the duration. Best guess, if we tell them we need a chief scientist, they'll fill his body with a rota of Earth tourists. I don't think that's going to cut it, do you?” 

“And you think if Young was here, he would just let Rush go back to work as though nothing had happened? He wouldn't – oh, I don't know - leave him behind at the next rockball?” 

It was a question that had preyed on her mind for a day or two, before she dismissed it. Something had gone on on that planet, for sure – she'd treated enough brawl injuries to know the pair of them had come to blows. Maybe that was what had triggered the rock slide? She didn't know, but she still trusted. Even if... even if he had done something... unwise... he'd want a chance to redeem himself, and she wanted him to get that chance. 

They could think about consequences when Young and Scott were back. And she wasn't going to say 'if'. This mad scheme that was probably only going to lead to James's death? It was the only thing that still felt like life to her. The only real choice she had left. 

“It's a risk I'm prepared to take.” 

A long two days of wary peace passed grudgingly. She began to consider easing up on the crowd control, but maybe not yet. Not until they'd taken this last chance and seen what the future would look like afterwards. Her anger at least began to drain, and hope kept the debilitating grief at bay. 

Then the corridors were filled with rainbows as they downjumped into normal space, and it was on. With anxiety like a belly full of eels, TJ sent away teams to three planets that looked like they might have food, and waited for the Nakai to find them. 

Almost fifteen hours passed, and she was worn out with nerves. The teams were on their way back – team beta had already unloaded – she hadn't left the control interface room, and neither had Rush (let out under armed guard to do his ship-whispering thing) or Eli. 

Her radio crackled. She jumped, thumbed it on. “It's Greer. Any news?” 

Just the binary suns in the viewscreen, and the purple curve of the nearest world, mockingly peaceful. “I'll put it on intercom,” she said. “ _If_ they turn up.” 

Eli's entire right cuff was a fraying mess of unpicked stitching, and that faintly manic intensity she'd noticed in him before was even more pronounced now. “Just because they haven't turned up yet doesn't mean they won't. There's still time. There’s probably light-lag on the transmitter to consider, because everyone forgets how huge space really is.” 

He gave Rush an encouraging smile, a tad too emphatic. “I mean, you and Chloe got out of there, right? So there's like a tried and tested... manual....? You'll see, any moment. Any moment now and they'll be back.” 

She wished he hadn't said that. That kind of thing was tempting fate, and the countdown clock was flicking through blocky Ancient numbers like a man bleeding out. Half an hour to go. This was a fool's hope, and she knew it. She was a stupid, besotted idiot to think-- 

“And yes!” Eli shouted. “We've got incoming.” A flower of blue white light blossomed almost on top of them and there it was, square, ugly, huge, with that glowing disk in the centre of it like a cyclopean eye. “I mean, oh shit, we've got incoming! No, wait!” 

Pouring out of the hangars on either side of the thing scurried its bug-like fighters, but the mothership itself was not shooting. Its huge, powerful guns lay dark and dormant along its hull. 

TJ's radio crackled. Greer's voice again. “Gate teams alpha and gamma are onboard, ma'am. Twenty five minutes to jump.” 

And then James's. “I'm suited up and ready to go. Kino in my fist. Is Eli there?” 

Eli handed the shields console to Rush and picked up a kino remote. “Hey, James, okay I've got you.” 

“I'm going out of the shuttle dock now. Get ready to shut the door behind me.” 

The fighter craft were half way to Destiny already, one a little way ahead of the others. All of them, except for that one, had opened fire. Flame sleeted down in strings like a meteor shower. It was going to hit James and incinerate her the moment she got outside the shields. This plan was... 

“Is there any way we can roll the ship? Put the hull between James and that bombardment?” 

“You know we have no control over Destiny's movements,” even Rush sounded tense, as though he worried about James too.

 “Chill,” Eli’s thumbs were poised above the kino remote. “It's just like live action Space Invaders. I'm nearly the best in the world when it comes to evading fire from pixelated spaceships. James? Disconnect your mag boots and jump on three.” 

“Shields are scarcely registering their attacks,” Rush had one elbow on the console, looked perfectly at home in a way he hadn't looked for days, even though he had filled every wall in his room with math and asked for more paper. “The sensors I can bring to bear don't find anything different about that first one. It's not broken, it's choosing not to fire. I wonder...?” 

“One.” 

Rush moved over to the console on which they had received their chilling demand of surrender. “And yes, we are getting a transmission.” His fingers flew over trackpad and dial and then the transmission was flung up on holographic screen in a definitive red speech bubble. 

“Two.” 

 _TJ, it's us. Don't shoot._  

Hope ran glorious through all her bones. But it could be a ruse. 

“James?” She interrupted Eli's countdown. “Stand down for now. There's a development.” 

She wasn't going to believe it until she saw them both for herself. 

The flotilla of other fighters behind that leader must have intercepted its transmission too. One by one they broke off from firing on Destiny and began to shoot at the first craft. 

Still no attack had come from the mothership. “They must have disabled the big ship's weapons,” TJ said, more convinced that this was real now that she was scared again. “In which case Destiny doesn't need full shields after all. Divert power to weapons and fire on the pursuing fighters.” 

Rush looked at her. He too, though it might be her imagination, seemed just that little bit lightened at the discovery that he was not a murderer after all. “A lot of us didn't agree that you could risk all our lives over this.” 

“I know,” she said, at peace with the decision, “But in case you’ve forgotten, I’m in charge. Do what I say, please.” 

He gave her a cynical look, but even as he glared his hands were making the adjustments. She could see it on the screens, as he brought up targeting, as Eli primed the main weapon. 

“James,” she said, “get back inside. Fifteen minutes to jump. Fire at will.” 

The closest fighters had clustered together to get the best angles of attack. A single burst from the plasma cannon burned through them all, and the foremost craft outraced the fireball. A distant hit sparked on its surface and left a black graze, but it pushed on. Eli fired again, all his gaming experience translated into a delicate touch on the targeting sliders, and in the hail of debris that followed, the first fighter slipped inside Destiny's shields and grappled on. 

“Where?” 

“Junction of NT34 and AZ2.” 

TJ radioed Greer. “Get to the machinery workshop on AZ2 asap. Take a team.” 

“Is it them?” 

“That's what I want you to tell me.” 

She looked at Eli's radiant face, and at Rush who seemed both nervous and relieved. Rush was watching the numbers on the countdown clock as they emptied themselves down to zero. With a groan and a shudder, Destiny slipped back into FTL and they were safe again, except that TJ felt she was going to burst or be sick, because she didn't know, not for sure. She didn't dare to ask. 

Snap from the radio, and she jumped as if she had been electrocuted. Greer's voice, smooth as cream with satisfaction. “Yes ma'am, we got them. Colonel Young, Lieutenant Scott safe back on board. With a guest.” His voice took on a curl of feline amusement, haughty with a touch of cruel. “Woo! Ain't that a thing.” 

She wanted to ask him what he was talking about, but found herself instead sagging against the wall, as the weight of a small planet rolled off her shoulders, leaving her achy and bruised and prone to weep. She pinched the bridge of her nose instead and laughed some of the tension out. 

They were back, her friend. The father of her possible child. She couldn't worry about 'guests' at a time like this as relief cracked her shell and pushed her out into a new life. They were back. Everything was going to be okay.


	9. Chapter 9

Rush sank onto his bed with his arms wrapped tightly around himself. Pathetic maybe, but the illusion of an embrace made him feel safer, warmer, and he needed that. He'd rather hoped that Lieutenant Johansen might have allowed him the dignity of being out of his cell when his murderer returned to judge him, but apparently not. Who would have thought that she could be such a martinet even now it was proved beyond a doubt that he had not killed anyone? 

She had such a lovely bedside manner – so gently caring, so sympathetically amused. It had misled him into believing she would be easily dealt with, once Young was out of the picture. That had been one in a shameless catalogue of mistakes. He should have known that even the best, most kindly person, could be turned into a programmed killing machine by military brainwashing. They jumped, under stress, exactly where they'd been trained to jump. 

He tightened his grip on his arms, drew his knees up and pressed his back into the corner of his room. Oh, didn't that feel familiar? Shit – you ran as far as you could all your life and it still came back to this in the end. No escape. 

But no surrender either. 

The fucking futility of his own defiance struck him like self-loathing. What did it matter if he surrendered or not? He'd lost. He'd tried finding any wiring in his walls with which to make a difference, and there was nothing, only the sewage pipe from the latrines on the deck above, and a power cable that he could use to kill himself if it came to it. Which it would not. He didn't intend to make this easy for any of them. 

It was a bitterly unfunny irony that all of his intelligence, all of his knowledge could be counteracted simply by shutting him in a room and putting a man with a gun on the door. He possibly should not have pushed the situation to the point where this became an acceptable military tactic. 

It just rubbed salt in the wound that they brought him out occasionally to put him to work, shoved him straight back in the box when they were done. He would have liked to have Camile's naivety – to be able to protest 'They can't get away with this!' But he didn't, and he knew they could. 

Still, he had been alive. Things might have changed, improved. He would have found a workaround. The military did not know what they were looking at. A few extra keystrokes here and there when he was doing something else, and he could have unlocked his door, forced an alarm that would have taken his sentry away, and got out. After which it would be only a matter of time before he could take the ship back. 

There had therefore been some hope, no matter how bleak it looked. Now that Young was back though? Well... he hesitated to think. 

The clatter of his door rolling open made him viscerally aware of the alien thing embedded in his chest, but he put his feet down promptly and braced his hands against the edge of the bed, ready. 

Young stood in the doorway, returned from the dead, and Rush fought the instinctive recoil. Young did not get the satisfaction of knowing he was afraid. 

“So,” Rush smiled. “Here we are again.” 

He expected to be hit, or for Young to nod to the goons at his back and to be dragged to the gate room to be left behind again. Maybe, if he was lucky, to be dragged to the operating table, and then back here again, where he could be held until they tried him and transferred his consciousness into some visiting idiot whose body could be held in a different cell on Earth. 

They couldn't. They couldn't make anything stick. Not with Young and Scott alive. What could he be accused of? Mutiny? You had to be in the military before you could mutiny against it. Attempted murder? Well, actually... Actually he could see them building a case for that. Though if it happened, he would damn well take Young down with him. Oh, the man would learn to regret opening that particular can of worms. 

Young smiled in return. As he had smiled immediately before trying to kill Rush the first time, Rush did not find the expression reassuring. “Yeah, here we are.” 

Uninvited, Young did not come further in, he just propped his shoulder against the door jamb and leaned, deceptively calm. He was like one of those endurance predators – you thought you would outrun them easily, but they _just kept on coming,_ wearing you down until you were tired out and vulnerable. 

“Are you going to give me a clue as to my fate, or shall try to I guess?” Rush asked, impatient. 

Young snorted as if he was honestly amused. “I figure we're even now.” 

In the matter of principle, they were not remotely even. Young had left Rush behind deliberately – the fact that he regretted it later was only evidence of his indecision. Rush had not meant for anyone to be lost. This was a distinction on which it was important to be clear. Yet he felt it would be unproductive to say so. 

“Yes, very even,” he said instead. “With you in charge and me in a cell.” 

“I've just come from talking to Camile,” said Young as though he hadn't heard. Rush couldn't decide if Young’s minimal expression was earnest hatred or earnest something else. It hardly mattered. “And I get that the civilians on this ship didn't mutiny because they thought I'd been doing a bang up job.” 

That was surprising, even a little funny. In absentia, the man had won. The military had tightened their grasp around _everything_ to the point where it made no rational sense to insist that they couldn't do whatever they wanted. If Rush had expected anything, it would have been for Young to come back to that and exploit it to the hilt, taking advantage of a victory that someone else had earned for him to consolidate his own position. That would have confirmed everything he thought about the man. 

This was not quite it. Rush had thought Camile naïve in her assertion that Young would see reason, would remember that the civilians had rights too, but had she, unthinkably, actually been correct? 

“Well, congratulations on the insight,” he said, glaring at his sentry, Michaels who stood rigid behind Young, eavesdropping on every word. “And you thought the best way to soothe their resentment was to put the ship under military law?” 

“That's... uh, over now.” Young followed his gaze, found Michaels watching him. “Dismissed.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

As if the guard had been a black cloud over the sun, when he left, everything seemed to grow brighter. Rush wasn't sure this wasn't just softening him up before the blow, but he was glad to go along with it so far. 

“What?” He asked, just to clarify, because this sounded outlandish and far too good to be true, “We pretend it never happened? Because that worked so well last time.” 

Young gave a bitter, dismissive laugh. “Yeah, because I trusted you and you used that opportunity to divide the ship against itself, knowing we were going to be attacked by enemies you were leading straight to us. You're going to blame _me_ for that not working out?” 

Young always made survival sound so venal, as though just because _he_ would be happy to kill himself at the first opportunity, everyone else must feel the same way. Yet the whole universe was on Rush's side there – the right to fight for one's own existence was intrinsic to the very nature of life itself. 

“You're going to blame me for not wanting to be murdered a second time?” 

“I already said--” Young cut his rising voice off as he undertook what seemed like an epic battle for control of his temper. “Look. I get it. That’s why I figure we’re even and it’s time to let it go. Because we're a long way from Earth and having Earth up in our business is going to make everything worse for everyone.” 

Was that 'I'd rather have you, Rush, than a succession of Earth's top scientists rotated through your vacant body?' Rush found that hard to believe, but also hard to interpret in a different way. A sliver of grudging hope began to prick at his mental defences. Even the hard shape of the metal thing in his breast seemed to shrink until he could breathe again. 

“I've already let Camile out, with the promise that I'm going to do everything in my power to cooperate with her better in the future. I want to give you that promise too.” 

Rush took a step toward the doorway, even though Young was still standing in it. “And then I'm free to return to work?” 

Young didn't move. “First we take the transmitter out. And _then_ you’re free to go back to work.” 

Oh right. Right. He'd thought it was too good to be true. “Take it out?” 

“Dr. Brightman from Stargate Command is waiting for you in the infirmary right now.” 

Young leaned forward and took Rush by the elbow, and he resented that, but he also took some strength from the reality of the touch, firm but not painful, urging but not dragging him forward. 

“Now?” he said, because he wasn't ready. He didn't trust Destiny's infirmary to be properly sterile. He wasn't sure he trusted TJ any more not to make some deliberate mistake with the anaesthetic that meant he wouldn't ever wake up again. But at the same time, he wanted this damn thing OUT of him, wanted to stop feeling like his very heart had been invaded and turned against him by those monsters. 

Young's face softened. “It's got to come out, you know that. So best get it over with.” 

It was good to get out of his room with no guard but Young. He was no expert on atmospheres, but the walk to the infirmary seemed less grim now that the civilians were free to mingle again. Brody, Volker and O'Hara were gossiping outside the control interface room and nodded to him as he passed. 

“Ergh,” said Volker helpfully. “You might want to, I don't know. Brace yourself.” 

It was a vague warning, and he paid very little attention to Volker on principle, so when he turned the corner and found himself face to face with a Nakai, he was utterly unprepared. His legs locked in place, and a slick coldness swept over his skin as if he was once more suspended in a tank of freezing water. He scrabbled for Young's gun, buttoned down in its holster at the man's waist, and the hard grip that came down over his wrists bruised him down to the bone as he fought it, trying to kill the thing, defend himself. Defend Park who was-- 

Park was crouching close to the creature. She had the transmitter half of the telepathy device affixed to her forehead, and the Nakai – a rather pathetic, desaturated specimen – wore the receiver. The pair of them were puzzling over a chalk diagram on the floor that he immediately recognised as the wiring diagram for the power connections to the kitchen. 

“It's great to see you out and about again,” said Park, looking up, apparently blissfully unconcerned that she was sharing Destiny's secrets with the enemy. “This is Artic. Ze's got some really interesting insights about--” 

“What are you doing?” Rush added together everyone's stupid confidence with Young's grip on his wrists, and turned on the man. “This is your idea.” 

“Artic helped us get home. I promised hir a place on the crew in return.” 

“Oh that's just marvellous! You complain about my tracker and you have the nerve to bring a live enemy alien on board?” 

It was looking at him. His heart raced an unsteady gallop in the back of his throat as all his muscles tried to clamp rigid in anticipation of pain. 

“How are you coming on back-engineering that communication device?” Young asked as though he wasn't aware of Rush's distress. 

“We're still mapping out what it's doing in the brain,” Volker fell over himself to explain, nudging a laptop on the floor so Young could see the screen. Rush noticed that in addition to the triangular Nakai device, Park wore a net of electrical sensors over her loose black hair. It was an unsettlingly academic picture – the experimental subject working through known problems while her brain activity was monitored by her scientific colleagues. One of whom happened to be a fucking creepy terrifying monster, which was delicately holding a stick of chalk between its deformed, skeletal claws. 

“You want to make more of those devices?” Rush asked, still not quite tracking. He felt like he was seeing two different worlds at once, irreconcilable, and yet both in the same place. A world in which they had gained a new scientist – one who had knowledge drawn from studying Destiny over a species’ lifetime, knowledge that Rush _wanted_ with a great thirst _._ And a world in which he was a helpless prisoner, and this thing was coming at him with syringes. 

Young shrugged. “We've got to be able to talk to hir.” He nodded to the group, got a grin of acknowledgement from O'Hara and a stiff nod from everyone else, and then he dragged Rush past and around the corner that lead to the infirmary. 

“Oh no,” Rush said, digging his heels in. “I'm not being unconscious and helpless on a ship with that thing on board.” 

“That thing is a scientist like you. All ze wants to do is study Destiny. I figure we let hir, and everything ze learns gets fed straight into the brain of whoever ze's talking to today.” 

Which made a certain amount of sense, actually. Rush knew that. He just didn't _feel_ it. He made a concerted effort to try to bring his feelings into compliance with his reason, but they wouldn't budge. Trauma, he thought, but stupidity was probably closer. 

“If it makes you feel any better,” Young looked almost sympathetic, “Ze's under guard at all times, and forbidden from touching anything unless there's one of the science team present to supervise. I'm not just letting hir run wild.” 

It _was_ marginally reassuring. So that was what O'Hara had been doing with the group. She didn't normally deign to mingle with civilians. And really, _aliens_. It would be something to be able to pick its brains as its people had done to him. Fascinating in itself, plus it would be helpful to learn enough about its civilization to no longer be afflicted by nightmares about the whole species. 

Nevertheless, “We can't trust it.” 

Young gave a small, ironic smile as he escorted Rush into the infirmary, where a bed awaited him, and a woman who wore Chloe's body was just finishing scrubbing up. 

“Scientists I can't trust are not a new thing for me, Rush. I figure we'll work something out.” 

Ha ha. And yet Rush had to admit he was marginally impressed that Young had come back even from this. It might be worth playing along for now, giving him a chance to prove that he could be the man for the job after all. Rush prided himself on being open minded enough to modify his conclusions in the light of new evidence. Let Young convince him, if he could. 

He allowed himself to be fitted with an oxygen mask and a cannula and considered that he was not being thrown out of an airlock, nor made to spend the rest of his life in someone else's body in a cell on Earth. It could have been worse. 

He was even, perhaps, a little glad that Young and Scott were still alive. A weight he hadn't wanted to acknowledge had been removed from his mind. 

“Second chances all around?” he asked as drowsiness took him. His own work awaited him, to get back to in freedom when he woke up, and that was not an inconsiderable lure. “Well, why not?”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Aquafilia](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5726536) by [Yoyi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yoyi/pseuds/Yoyi)




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